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Many places in the Ghost Zone appeared crowded and ruined. Buildings built on buildings built on buildings, all at odd angles, in dozens of different styles from dozens of ages, all in various states of decay or construction. Stairways went up and down, twisted, turned, and inverted, only rarely leading anywhere. Doors floated free or attached like barnacles to buildings that would have groaned under the extra weight if gravity had a greater presence here.
Usually, Danny avoided the hulking behemoths, preferring free-floating planet-like islands and Realms, or the lairs of his allies. These places seemed somehow both more intimate and more impersonal. More doomed, as if they had long ago been condemned. More dead , for all that this was the Ghost Zone.
But for the sake of science? Of exploration?
Yeah. He’d do a few things of questionable wisdom.
(More than a few, if he were being honest.)
“Which one looks good to you?” Danny asked his parents as he slowly rotated. None of them, after all, looked good to him.
“How about that Greek revival one?” asked Jack.
Danny oriented himself so the camera pointed directly at it. “That one?”
“Yeah! I’ve always liked buildings like that.”
The building in question was less ‘Greek revival’ and more ‘cancerous growth of bloated brick tenement bulging from within crumbling Greek ruin.’ But since Danny had understood the description, he really couldn’t complain.
“Okay, I’ve just got to find a way in,” he said, half to himself. He avoided lair doors. He didn’t want to be rude.
“Danny?” said Maddie. “What about all the doors you’re passing?”
“Hm? They’re lair doors? They don’t actually go into the building.”
“Really? How can you tell?”
“They’re a different color,” said Danny, baffled. “All lair doors are the same color.”
“Danny, the doors you’re passing are all different colors,” said Maddie.
“If all different colors are green and purple,” added Jack.
“I- Yes? They’re green and purple, but they’re also a different color.”
“Are you referring to trim colors?” asked Maddie.
“No,” said Danny, pausing. “The door itself. Like, that one, there, it’s purple, but it’s also the color that lair doors are.”
“At the same time?”
“Yeah,” said Danny.
“What does that color look like?” asked Maddie.
“Well,” said Danny, “not green or purple. I mean, you might as well ask me to describe the color blue. It’s just… it’s the color lair doors are. I can’t explain it any more than that.”
“Fascinating,” said Maddie. “You must be processing information received by your ghost half through your visual cortex.”
“If you say so,” said Danny. “I always thought it was just giving off a wavelength of light humans can’t see, but…” he shrugged.
“Danny,” said Maddie, “you know you could have told us that at the beginning.”
“I was kind of focusing on finding a door that goes in . Ah, there’s a proper one.”
He flitted forward, twisting around a cluster of lair doors, and put his hand on the knob. “You guys ready?”
“Anytime you are, kiddo!” said Jack.
“Great,” said Danny. He pulled the door open and stepped in, for some reason feeling the need to settle, rather than fly. He shuddered as all his small hairs stood on end and his ears popped.
There was a lot of pressure here, but not in the same way as the deeps. Lights and ghost flies buzzed overhead. Mold and other foul, stale scents hung in the still, oppressive air. The pattern on the carpet and wallpaper was faded and incomprehensible, yet inescapable. Drawing the eye but refusing to give up its secrets.
Danny took a step forward and the floor groaned beneath him. It almost seemed to spin.
(He was always going to live here, things were never going to get better, the rent was going up, they hated it here, condemned and where else would they go, better than a fire, they had no where else to go, the gas and electricity was cut last week, landlord didn’t fix the pipes, mind the ratcatcher, she didn’t want to do this anymore but what else was there, no one could fix this.)
Danny flared his aura, driving off memories of thoughts that weren’t his. It wasn’t strong, this ghost of a building, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t disturbing.
“Okay,” he said, into the microphone, “where to?”